I can only imagine the disappointment and displeasure God has experienced due to the breach in relationships among His people. He is grieved. He is angered by it, especially when it goes on for years and years, because it limits His hand of blessing upon the individuals who are at fault. The local church becomes hindered as well.

For the life of me, I do not understand why humans would rather feed and nurture a riff rather than heal it. God gives clear instructions on how to mend fences and how to effectively get along despite our differences. He knew we would clash every now and again, so He gives healthy, godly solutions in order to work out our differences with respect.

If a person has offended you, you have a leg to stand on, and you have every right to confront them, to help them see where they have wronged you. For the person who runs to others, to complain about someone, I scarcely doubt they were the offended party at all. It may just be that they have an issue that doesn't qualify as an offense.

God desires that there be healing in broken relationships. The problem comes in when individuals refuse to do their part in the healing process. Mind you, not every quarrel or disagreement is an offense.

God is not interested in our worship of Him, until we go and make things right with our brother or sister. "Leave your sacrifice there at the altar. First go and be reconciled to that person, then come and offer your sacrifice to God" (Matt. 5:24). Scripture tells us to confess our sins to God. He also tells us to confess the wrong we've done, to each other. This is the part many fail to do.

No one should know that there was a breach between you and another person. It must remain between you and that person alone. It does not involve others. When you bring others into it, you have now sown discord among the Lord's people. This is an abomination to God. He detests this type of thing, yet we do it time and time again. You can always tell who knows what, by the way they are now responding to you, or reacting to you. It is one of the worst things that saints can do. It impacts the entire church.

It should be the desire of individuals to resolve their issues. It should never go on for months, let alone years. God gives a time span for the fault to be rectified. Don't let Sunday come and you have an unresolved issue with your brother. That is the time span. There are seven days to a week and which ever day the offense occurred, that's the amount of time, before Sunday, that it should be resolved. I have found that when persons have a desire to honor and please the Lord, these matters get ironed out quickly. When they don't, it leaves room for speculation. It shows a lack of spirituality, and an unwillingness to be obedient. It also shows a lack of true love on the part of the person resisting. Sometimes both parties are resistant to do what needs to be done.

Failure to work out offenses causes the matter to grow and fester, thereby infecting others. It doesn't matter how much we may try to cover this sin, we will not prosper. "He who conceals his sins will not prosper" (Prov. 28:13).

HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS WE DO WHEN WE ARE TRYING TO HIDE A SIN AGAINST OUR BROTHER:

We go to others to tell our side of the story as a way to justify our position. It starts by expressing some dissatisfaction with the person when we know deep down inside we have wronged them.

We try to feel them out, when we see them, to see if they will respond kindly to us, after we've wronged them. If they speak, we write it off as no wrong was done. If they are cold towards us, or apprehensive, we try to push ourselves on them for the response we feel most comfortable with, or we may even use their response as a justifiable reason to speak against them.

We opt to compliment them with false niceties because our conscience is guilty for wronging them.

We let a good amount of time go by, avoiding them, and then out of the blue, we try to communicate in some way as if nothing ever happened. If we don't get the response we want, we go and bad mouth them to others.

We simply let it go for years and years.

In some cases, the party isn't offended at all by the negative action on our part. They simply have been forewarned by our behavior, and have decided to step back and limit their dealings with us.

Some of us have it twisted. We think that just because a person is a Christian, that we can get away with taking them for granted, and that they should always give us what we want when we come to them. I don't read that anywhere in the Bible. But I have read where it clearly states, "Whatsoever a man sows, that he shall also reap" (Gal. 6:7), "A brother offended, is harder to be won than a strong city", (Prov. 18:19). In other words, when we choose to treat a person a certain way, for whatever reasons, we must be prepared for the outcome of such treatment. Once a person sees our character and manner of handling them, they wisely pull back. We are not to take advantage of one another or take each other for granted.

Many blessings have been lost because we don't handle one another properly. We should be enjoying all that we have with one another, but instead, we ruin relationships among the Lord's people, and we refuse to make things right.

​We've pretty much come to the end of another year. Let's examine ourselves. Let's not let the next year roll in with old issues that are unresolved. Confess your fault to God, and then go and confess it to your brother or sister while there is still time.